Words, vows, gifts, tears, and love's full sacrifice, He offers in another's enterprise; But more in Troilus thousand-fold I see Than in the glass of Pandar's praise may be, Yet hold I off.
People who, out of an inborn moderation, leave every glass standing only half-emptied refuse to admit that everything in the world has its sediments and dregs.
They enter, locking themselves in, descend the rugged steps, and are down in the Crypt. The lantern is not wanted, for the moonlight strikes in at the groined windows, bare of glass, the broken frames for which cast patterns on the ground. The heavy pillars which support the roof engender masses of black shade, but between them there are lanes of light.
More and more do I feel, as I advance in life, how little we really know of each other. Friendship seems to me like the touch of musical-glasses--it is only contact; but the glasses themselves, and their contents, remain quite distinct and unmingled.
A writer always wears glasses and never combs his hair. Half the time he feels angry about everything and the other half depressed. He spends most of his life in bars, arguing with other dishevelled, bespectacled writers. He says very 'deep' things. He always has amazing ideas for the plot of his next novel, and hates the one he has just published.
My glass shall not persuade me I am old, So long as youth and thou are of one date; But when in thee time's furrows I behold, Then look I death my days should expiate.
The lesson? To respond to the unexpected and hurtful behavior of others with something more than a wipe of the glasses, to see it as a chance to expand our understanding.
An optimist will tell you the glass is half-full; the pessimist, half-empty; and the engineer will tell you the glass is twice the size it needs to be.